December 2023 Budget

I'm going to be honest here, I completely winged it when it came to our finances this month.  There were a few other things going on, as well as the whole getting ready for Christmas, so I had kind of expected that this month wouldn't go particularly well.  That being said, having the Christmas sinking fund was a really good thing and meant that we at least didn't have to stress about that.  It's definitely something I'll continue to do in the future.

Despite all that we actually didn't do too badly this month.  Specifically on the food spending, which is where we usually have a problem.  Our spending on takeaways and eating out stayed right within our budget this month and we only ended up spending about £50 above our planned budget for groceries, including the big spend on Christmas food.

Our mobile phone bills have gone back to the normal price now as well, now that we've taken the roaming off them again.  I've also been keeping up with using the app to reduce my phone bill even further.  It's not a lot but it all helps and I get a weird feeling of accomplishment despite the small amount.  I did have a little moment when I was sorting out our breakdown cover and accidentally booked two covers, but thankfully I contacted the company and they sorted it out for me straight away which was very nice of them.  Always good to see money coming back into your account.  I was also able to do it all by email so I didn't even have to interact with a human.  Nice!

We also spent a little less on fuel this month, though I'm not entirely sure how we managed to do that.  I believe it was partly because we had a week where Ed was off work and my drive to work is a lot shorter than his, so I actually didn't need to fill up during that time at all.  I also got my first wage from my new job this month, but as the amount they have taken for my pension is less than I have planned I did need to make an additional payment this month as well.  I do need to look into increasing this automatic withdrawal for my next wage.  However, first I do need to find out how much I can actually increase it to as some have a limit on this.  This might mean that I'll need to continue making an additional payment to my own pension account as before.

Our personal spending has been really good this week, probably because we've been too busy spending on other people, so I'm very happy with that and hopefully, this will be something we can continue to do in the future.  Probably the biggest win is that we managed to put more money into our four-month savings, which got us to our new savings goal for this year and over the halfway point to our long-term goal.  Whoop whoop!

So, despite not really concentrating on our budgeting this month we have somehow managed to do pretty well on it.  I have to admit that some of it will be because we've been way too busy to be able to spend on unnecessary things, but hopefully, we'll be able to continue this next year so that we can get to our goals a lot sooner than we had originally planned.  

November 2023 Budget

There have been a few things going on recently and I've had a lot on my mind, so I've been pretty distracted and really haven't been concentrating at all on budgeting and looking after our finances.  So, as expected the spending this month hasn't been great, not helped by the fact that my pay was much less this month due to there being a gap between my old job ending and my new one beginning.

All the usual bills are pretty much the same as before, though our electricity was a little bit more this month, partly due to it being darker for longer now and partly because I've been at home a lot more which naturally means using more electricity no matter how careful I try to be.  Our phone bills were also a little higher this month as we had added roaming to our phones when we went to Brittany, but that will only be for this month.

We have managed to reduce our spending on food this month but it's still much higher than I had originally budgeted for.  Some of it has been us spending on things we really didn't need to spend on, but I have noticed that the cost of food has gone up a bit which means our original budget might actually be a little bit unrealistic.  I'll need to think about increasing this for next year.

We spent more on travel this month as well as I headed down south to help with some family stuff.  For this, I took the bus down (which without a doubt is the cheapest way of travelling far in the UK still) and then my husband came down when he had his days off work.  We also had to spend quite a bit on the car this month with its MOT being due and needing to sort out the advisories that came from that including changing a tyre, renewing our insurance which has gone up quite a bit for everyone now, and renewing our breakdown cover.  I haven't used the money from our car repair sinking fund for these as I want to see if we can get away with leaving that for now.  However, if we need to I'll move the money over.  

This month I also put across my last pension payment from my old job.  I will need to look at moving what pension payment they made into their own scheme into my own account, but hopefully it's just come back to me in my last pay.  I will need to see my wage slip to be sure and I haven't had that yet.

There has also been quite a lot of gift buying this month as there have been a few people's birthdays and we've started buying for Christmas.  I know it's early but I do need to send some of the gifts and I also find Christmas a bit stressful so I like getting it all sorted early so I can just enjoy the run-up.  I am really glad we worked on our Christmas sinking fund during the year as it's made this whole time a lot easier and we don't have to worry so much about money.  We did back peddle a little bit on our personal spending this month and both of us overspent quite a bit.  Specifically me as I spent about £80 in IKEA.  We went to get some things we needed but of course, ended up getting additional things we suddenly realised we needed once we were there.

So not great really.  We weren't able to put any money into our savings this month, which means we only have December to try and reach our new savings goal, but I'm not going to worry too much about that as it was being a little ambitious.  I had a feeling that November wouldn't be great based on how the rest of the year has gone.  However, that could just have been a self-perpetuating idea and it definitely hasn't helped that I haven't made budgeting a priority this year at all.  I'll be back to work in December so it'll be good to start having more money coming in again, but should also reduce what we spend a little bit on electricity and food.  It'll just be Christmas spending now and I can't think of anything extra we'll need to get for ourselves.  I guess we'll see how that goes.

Goals 2023 Update #2

This year definitely feels like it's going by very quickly and I am a little surprised that we've gotten half way through half it already.  It has been a bit of a mixed batch when it comes to me completing my goals for this year, but now that I'm looking at them it has actually gone better than I originally thought.

Financial

• Four months emergency fund - this fund took quite a beating at the start of the year and I really thought we were going to struggle with getting it back on track.  However, we've not only managed to catch back up, but are actually over the half way mark I had planned for us for this year.  We should still be able to keep putting in a good amount for the next four months, but I'm not sure how it will go once my current contract is over in November.  I would still like us to reach our goal this year, but to do so we'll probably have to do some real saving this coming quarter.
• Sinking funds - apart from the 'pie in the sky' sailing lessons sinking fund, we have reached our planned amounts for all our sinking funds for this year.  I have of course already spend all of my craft sinking fund.  We will hopefully be spending our surfing lessons one soon, but the rest will sit there for future use.  One hopefully never (the car repairs) and one a little closer to Christmas.
• Pensions and personal spending - I'm still putting 12.5% of my wage into my pension.  I had hoped that, now that I'm employed, this would be done through my wage but at the moment it hasn't been set up that way so I'm continuing to just pull out that amount myself.  We haven't done as well on our personal spending as we have with all our other financial goals.  We were being good for a little while, but then a whole lots of needed things came up and then not so needed but definitely wanted things.  We are financially stable at the moment so the spending isn't putting us in any financial difficulties, but it would still be good to get control on this for this last half of the year so that we can do better at reaching our financial goals and we don't know how our finances at the end of this year.
• Changing my bank account - I'm still to do this.  There isn't really any reason for me to not have done this already, it's just putting aside the time to sit down and do it.
• Secondary income - this is also something I still haven't done.  I just can't decide which way I'm going to go.  If I'm honest I'm also a little bit nervous about it, but I should really just give it a go.  Even if I fail at least I tried.

Learning New Skills

• Skateboarding - this was something that I had planned to do about two times a month, but so far I haven't even done it once this year.  The reason is completely that I'm nervous about doing it.  I think I've found somewhere to practise that is relatively flat and that doesn't have too many people using it.  It's unusual for me to let my fear stop me in this way, so even if it's just for that reason I need to just go and do it.
• Surfing - we now have the money we need to book some more surfing lessons and I've been researching where we can go to have these lessons.  All we need to do now is book them, which I will do once I've found out what my husbands next rota is.  Quite excited to be getting back to it and hopefully, after a couple more lessons, we should be able to start going surfing on our own.  I might also look at joining a women's surfing group just so I can build my confidence a little more.  
• Sailing - this is obviously on the back burner at the moment, but it's still in my mind as something we would like to do in the not so distant future.  I will need to research where we can get lessons from, etc, but for now it would be nice to just get to know the coast line near us a bit better.  That of course means sorting out some walking and beach days - what a shame.

So, a mixed bag of achievements.  We've done really well in some things and, mostly I've done, really badly on others.  There's still another six months to go though, which is still plenty of time to pull everything around.  Skateboarding is really the one I want to concentrate a bit more on, specifically because it's fear that is holding me back here.  It would also be good for my mind and body to learn something new and that I haven't done before.  So, the plan for the next quarter is just to keep doing what we're doing, but to put a little more emphasis on the skateboarding and controlling our personal spending.  That seems very do-able.  

October 2022 Budget

Well October shot by fast.  Is it really November all ready? At least things are starting to get back on track when it comes to our finances.

As always our own emergency funds and credit cards are where they need to be and we where able to put just over £700 into our four month emergency fund, which I'm very happy about. It might be building up slowly, but at least it is going up.

We did have a slight hiccup, especially one week where I forgot to take cash out so we used our cards instead, when it came to our groceries.  It definitely shows what a difference using cash instead of just swiping your card makes to how you spend your money.  The eating out is also connected to some family time and we're happy to spend money on that.  Despite that we have managed to mostly keep to our budget so I'm happy with it despite that.

One positive is that fuel has been been quite low this month, despite the actual cost of fuel not being, mainly because I haven't needed to drive as far for work this month.  We've also been pretty good on our spending, though again family time and there has been a start to Christmas shopping which does feel a little bit early but there we are.  My pension payments have been a little higher this month as I've been trying to catch up on that week I missed.  I should only have to do it for another month and then it can go back to normal.  Obviously I'll need to keep an eye on this though, as it may be that we just can't afford it.  

So October hasn't been quite as good as we could have made it, but still better than previous month's and we're getting onto the habits that will help us work better with our money.  Only a couple months to go now and, apart from a little long weekend we have planned, I plan for us to be well behaved on those months.